I have been canning jam for years. I did try to can pickles once and they didn't turn out.

We moved to a house with a glass top stove a few years ago and I have read a lot about glass top stoves cracking because of the heat and the weight of the canning pot. So I decided I would never be able to water bath can anything.

That is until my friend told me about using her Coleman stove outside to water bath can her tomatoes. I was able to go over to her house yesterday for my lesson.

The kids picked lots of tomatoes from the field next to her house:

We weren't able to get her Coleman stove to work right, so we ended up getting 11 quarts of tomatoes canned in side the house:

My friend sent me home with more fresh tomatoes so I could give it a try at home today. After running lots or errands today, I came home this afternoon and got busy. I picked up a new cookbook at Borders (with a 40% off coupon!) and read about processing pureed tomatoes. So I pureed lots of tomatoes and got my Coleman stove up and running:

I was able to fill up 8 pint jars of crushed tomatoes. Since only 7 will fit in the water bath canner, I gave one jar to a neighbor! I still had quite a bit of crushed tomatoes left, so I added some tomato paste and some seasonings to make some pizza sauce. I let that simmer for a while so we could have some dinner:

 This was a very yummy grilled cheese sandwich with little green tomatoes and fresh basil! After dinner, I packaged up the pizza sauce and here is what I ended up with after two days of canning:

I am so glad that the water bath canning works using my Coleman stove. Now I have to decide what to can next!